Max Bialystock and Donald Trump

WASHINGTON — Days before he was fired, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in money and personnel for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference …

For those of you unfamiliar with Mel Brooks’ The Producers, SPOILER ALERT and HOW did you manage to miss this classic American movie/musical/movie musical?

For the rest, consider this: The Trump Administration is The Producers only in politics and not on Broadway.

In the play/movie, Max Bialystock is a sleazy play producer who is described initially as selfish and greedy, who cares only for money.His production of “Funny Boy” — a musical version of Hamlet — has just closed after one performance. Enter mousy accountant Leopold Bloom, who arrives to audit the play. After some plot and character exposition, Bloom notices, “under the right circumstances, a producer could actually make more money with a flop than he can with a hit. […] You could’ve raised a million dollars, put on your $100,000 flop, and kept the rest!”

There’s a reason that this doesn’t bother McConnell

And so, the Producers attempt to produce the worst play ever written (Springtime for Hitler) directed by the worst director, etc. Except that, in the end, they are undone by the one contingency they could never have foreseen: the play is so bad that it’s good, it becomes a hit and Bialystock and Bloom go to jail.

And that seems to be the M.O. of Donald Trump’s entire campaign: running on the worst campaign platform (racism, xenophobia and megalomania), with the worst campaign staff (three separate teams), somehow, Springtime for Donald manages to become a hit.

Only problem is, as with The Producers, nobody had any contingencies for what would happen if it became a hit. No one expected it to be a hit. No one ever negotiated with foreign powers with the notion that the FBI and Congress would be looking into the whole morass. The reason for not releasing his tax returns? Didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to win.

Trump speaks; Ryan and Pence search for Pence’s contact lens

And so it goes. Now, from crisis to crisis, navigating by the seat of his pants and using the stars you see under an overcast sky, Trump and his cronies have been playing “Whack a Mole” with the fallout of their unexpected hit. At this point we have to ask: What innocent man would behave as Trump has behaved?

The James Comey incident is only the latest in a long series of missteps that an innocent party would never have committed.